This article outlines the process of how the author purposefully designed an integrative assignment to meet the real-world needs of a nursing cohort, First-Year Seminar anchored learning community. The author provides evidence from her own teaching practices to explore the elements that contributed to the construction of this assignment. For…

Offering first year seminars and experiences is well-established as one of the high-impact educational practices. An inquiry-based freshman seminar in which students conduct poverty simulation term projects has been offered for five years at the University of Georgia. The students have four project options of: dressing the part and panhandling…

The Effective Team Dynamics (ETD) Initiative at Georgia Tech developed curriculum to improve function of student teams. ETD uses the language of CliftonStrengths® to help students identify the areas in which they are the strongest and to apply those strengths to interpersonal contexts. ETD has developed curriculum for five "Touchpoints,"…

This article presents an instructional model for teaching a gateway history course that affects students by: 1) improving their ability to think at higher levels; 2) increasing engagement; and 3) enhancing their perception of the relevancy of the course material in comparison to traditional lecture and discussion. The model includes problem-based…

As part of a campus-wide, externally funded project to increase performance in, enthusiasm for, and retention within STEM disciplines, we developed an interdisciplinary, team-taught first-year seminar course. The construction and delivery of this course was designed to show the relevance of selected general chemistry topics such as matter and…